A Republic Cannot Succeed, Till It Contains

I Am Not The Least Afraid To Die

It Strikes Me That All Our Knowledge About The Structure Of Our Earth Is Very Much Like What An Old Hen Would Know Of The Hundred-acre Field In A Corner Of Which She Is Scratching.

But Just In Proportion As This Process Of Extermination Has Acted On An Enormous Scale, So Must The Number Of Intermediate Varieties, Which Have Formerly Existed, Be Truly Enormous. Why Then Is Not Every Geological Formation And Every Stratum Full Of Such Intermediate Links? Geology Assuredly Does Not Reveal Any Such Finely Graduated Organic Chain; And This, Perhaps, Is The Most Obvious And Serious Objection Which Can Be Urged Against The Theory. The Explanation Lies, As I Believe, In The Extreme Imperfection Of The Geological Record.

The Several Difficulties Here Discussed, Namely Our Not Finding In The Successive Formations Infinitely Numerous Transitional Links Between The Many Species Which Now Exist Or Have Existed; The Sudden Manner In Which Whole Groups Of Species Appear In Our European Formations; The Almost Entire Absence, As At Present Known, Of Fossiliferous Formations Beneath The Silurian Strata, Are All Undoubtedly Of The Gravest Nature.

The Following Proposition Seems To Me In A High Degree Probable—namely, That Any Animal Whatever, Endowed With Well-marked Social Instincts, The Parental And Filial Affections Being Here Included, Would Inevitably Acquire A Moral Sense Or Conscience, As Soon As Its Intellectual Powers Had Become As Well, Or Nearly As Well Developed, As In Man. For, Firstly, The Social Instincts Lead An Animal To Take Pleasure In The Society Of Its Fellows, To Feel A Certain Amount Of Sympathy With Them, And To Perform Various Services For Them.